


Tempest

by mabus101



Category: New Mutants, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-02-27 04:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13240611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabus101/pseuds/mabus101
Summary: In the real world, we now know that Grigori Rasputin died in a rather prosaic manner, and may not have actually joined the Khlysty.  But this is the Marvel Universe, folks.  He's nothing spectacular there.As to whether Rahne is onto something about Illyana...who knows?





	1. Chapter 1

Rahne huddles in her room under the covers. No matter what the professor tells her, she knows the truth: she's an unholy thing, a werewolf, possessed by a devil. How else could she do what she does?

Another knock on the door. Why won't they go away, whoever they are? "Rahne? It's Sam. I thought you'd want to talk."

"I'm nae interested in talking to boys, Sam. Go away."

He doesn't listen. The door swings open. "Not even about the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost?"

Rahne balls up tighter under the covers. She'd thought Sam was safe. But no, even here at the school, someone wants to kill her.

"Jesus' enemies saw that he had power," Sam says. "He healed and cast out demons. He walked on water and calmed storms. They couldn't deny he did it, so they said he was possessed, that he did it with the power of the devil."

This is a line of thought that has never occurred to her. Except...he can't be saying the Saviour was a mutant, can he? "Jesus didn't fly, and he didn't become a wolf."

"No," Sam says. "Wouldn't leave much room."

She frowns and pokes her head out of the covers. "Much room for what?"

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." Sam finishes with, "John chapter 14 verse 12."

"This isna a miracle, Sam! Are ye daft?" She goes down on all fours in front of him, showing him the beast in her as if he didn't know already.

Sam just shrugs. "Why not?" He crouches down to scratch behind her ears. "If God can make a man out of dirt and a woman out of his rib, why not a woman into a wolf and back again?"

She reverts so she can carry on the conversation and finds her face just inches from his. She leaps back onto the bed. "I kennit now. You're a devil too, sent to tempt me."

He shakes his head firmly. "An' I know you'll say of course I deny it. But it's right there in black and white. The bad guys are the ones who say that power comes from the devil. That's why Jesus says they can't be forgiven--cause can't nothing _convince_ 'em. Don't you see it?"

Slowly she crawls out of the bed again, on all fours. He doesn't flinch from the wolf, not one bit. He scratches behind her ears again and rubs her back. This time she lets him. Either way, the world is mad. So why not choose the madder way? Why not believe Sam is right?


	2. Chapter 2

Dani finally finds Rahne in the bathroom, scouring frantically at her bleeding head, razor purring along. She manages not to curse or scream, but she does let out a small "eek!"

Rahne turns to her, eyes welling up with tears. "It willna go away. Not all of it. Help me."

"Rahne," Dani says, taking the razor, "I don't understand. What are you doing?" But she begins to clear away the remaining patches of fuzz. The texture of Rahne's hair has always been strange, not like a bob or even a buzz cut, more like fur.

"It isna right for a woman to have short hair," Rahne says. "Paul says, if a woman has short hair, she may as well have her head shaved. So I'm shaving it."

Dani blinks. "I don't care how you wear your hair, Rahne. Your hair's not short because you cut it. It doesn't grow. But you've never seemed to mind before." Most of it is done, but she has to bandage a spot on top before she can finish; it's making the back sticky.

"Ye've not known me all that long yet," Rahne murmurs.

"I don't understand, Rahne. Why now?" It's still been a couple of months.

Rahne takes a deep breath. "Shan." But she blushes red and can't go on.

Dani tries to work that out. Half an hour ago, Xi'an was ruffling Rahne's hair. They all do that; it feels nice, and Rahne's never objected before. Sam does it most, and after him...Oh. "Wait. Did Shan...?" She isn't sure how to ask. She hadn't noticed before, but Xi'an really doesn't seem to look at Sam or Bobby the way she and Rahne and Kitty do.

"She stopped, and looked at me, and...it was like she made eyes at me," Rahne stumbled. "As if she were a boy, or I was. And I...I kenned I was confusing her. I look like a boy."

Dani gives a start, and nearly cuts her. "Not that much like a boy," she tries. "If you did...if you did, she wouldn't have been interested. At least, I don't think so. And Rahne, I don't think this will help."

"I dinna understand," Rahne murmurs. "Why would she--" Recognition lights up her eyes, and Dani begins a sigh of relief. "Her brother! Och, Dani, we have to help her!"

Dani puts her face in her hands. "No, Rahne. Her brother's not possessing her." Xi'an had been forced to absorb her brother's life force before they met her, to stop him killing Spiderman, but there was no trace of his consciousness in her. The Professor had confirmed it. "She's just...she just likes women instead of men."

Rahne scratches her head, inadvertently reopening a fresh cut. "I...I dinna understand that. How would you even...?"

"Just...you don't have to understand for now. Just accept that she does. If her showing an interest bothers you, tell her you're not interested just like you would tell a boy."

"Aye, Dani."

Danielle finishes up the bandages and leaves the room feeling cranky. How did Rahne even...? But of course it's Reverend Craig's fault. Rather than enlighten her, or even teach her that difference was sinful, he chose to leave her completely in the dark, probably until something strange shocked her and he could play on her fears.

But who to talk to about it? The professor may understand and he may not. Sam will see Rahne's perspective, but possibly too well. Nightcrawler, maybe. He's Christian and devout. Dani knows the basics, but she grew up on the rez with her grandfather, and Christianity has always been "white man's religion" to her. Of course, he's Catholic, but that shouldn't be too big a deal, right?


	3. Chapter 3

On her good days, Rahne believes. "Every good gift an' every perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of Lights, in whom there isna change nor shiftin' shadows."

Ororo nods patiently. Her room is like Eden must have been, a garden of beauty, but she's no believer, not in the true God. Kurt says she believed for a time she was a goddess herself, and even now she's some sort of heathen. "And changing into a wolf is a good and perfect gift?"

Rahne smiles, though she worries that she is conveying only a partial truth. "Everything is so alive. I feel alive. The things I can smell, an' hear...." Not the things she feels, the urge to kill and eat, the urge to...but any power can be a temptation. Even Jesus had been tempted by the devil to make bread from stones. It's enough for the servant to be like her master. "Aye, it comes from God."

"Do you think your god took my powers away?" Rahne tries not to stare. The question is a little accusation, a great deal more a desperate plea. Ororo tries not to bring it up around the students, but Rahne has heard the talk--Storm feels empty without her powers, feels abandoned even.

"Nay, Ororo, I dinna think so. If it were from nowhere, maybe. But it was a machine that took them, made by a man. Do ye think it?"

"Sometimes I feel it," Ororo says. "I don't believe it, not really, but sometimes I feel as if I'm cursed by the goddess."

"Tis strange," Rahne says. "To think yuir cursed by losing your powers, instead of by having them."

Ororo rises as if lost in thought, and begins to water her plants. "Would you do something for me?"

"What would ye have of me, teacher?"

"Surely you've met Illyana. Peter's sister."

Rahne remembers her. A tall girl, statuesque, blonde and beautiful. "I've spoken to her in the chapel. She seemed shy there, and I felt...she seemed more approachable."

"The chapel," Storm says thoughtfully. "Do you know what the Old Believers are? They're like Protestants, but from the Russian Orthodox Church instead of the Roman Catholic one."

"I...dinna know of them. Illyana's one?"

"Her family has been for over a century," Ororo says as she sits back down, "at least as far back as Grigori Rasputin, the 'mad monk' who was involved with the Romanov czars. Peter was raised atheist because the Soviets chased the Old Believers into hiding, but I don't know what Illyana believes. She's...she's not as old as she may seem, in some ways. I think she needs a friend, and if you saw her in the chapel...."

"I'll speak to her," Rahne says nervously. Wasn't Illyana kidnapped to hell by Belasco just before she came to the mansion? What happened to her there? "I'll try."


	4. Chapter 4

"Is that what you think?" Illyana tries to make her smile friendly rather than predatory. She thinks she may have failed, yet she's not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

"The man who raised me said I was possessed, too," Rahne insists. It's cute, and oh so doomed. "It was just my mutation. I'm not a devil at all."

"Your Reverend Craig was bad," Illyana agrees, "but he wasn't Belasco. If you'd been the one kidnapped to hell, you'd have found out what being a demon really is. And without my *actual* mutant power, you'd still be there, all demon and ready to summon the Elder Gods."

Rahne shifts, then, into her newfound half-wolf shape. Somehow it never looks quite the same from day to day. "Yuir sure?" She looms, trying to be intimidating, and on most people it would likely work. Her fangs, her hot breath, her smell, her yellow eyes....

Illyana shrugs and throws the poor dog a bone. "I guess it's not proven," she says reluctantly.

Rahne isn't one to give up easily. Maybe she *would* have found a way out of Limbo. "If it's really demonic," she posits, "then maybe an exorcism will work. If it's part of yuir mutation, then it doesn't damn you, an' you can learn to control it."

It could be worse. She's trying to help, not breaking out the torches and pitchforks. "What if it's both? Have you been introduced to Wanda Maximoff?"

"The Scarlet Witch? Nay."

"Ask the Professor about her," Illyana says. "Oh...and you should look like this more often. It reminds me of home." That's mean, she knows...but so is holding out false hope.

*****

Leonard Samson isn't comfortable with this at all. But he supposes the Professor has a point; the students have powers that sometimes need careful monitoring, and in any case Charles' power, by its very nature, makes it near-impossible to apply ordinary standards of privacy to him. He looks up from the screen.

"What do you think?" Charles asks. "Is it possible?"

Leonard sighs. "My work has been with gamma-ray transformations, Charles."

"I understand, Leonard. My work, and Reed's, indicates that the underlying genetic basis is the same. The inducing factor produces some differences, but they seem to be minor."

Leonard nods slowly. "Well...in that case...I will admit that there are some fundamental similarities between Bruce's case and Rahne's. Bruce gave me permission to talk about his case in this sort of context, so I can tell you that his Hulk persona is the product of his repressed anger at his father for abusing him. I believe he'd suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder even if he'd never been irradiated. Rahne is also an abuse survivor, and I could easily believe that she's externalized her...her so-called 'animalistic' urges as an actual animal form."

"She does seem somewhat more...exuberant as a wolf," Charles agrees. "Though not to the degree of having an additional personality."

"The same is true for me," Leonard says. "I believe my transformation expresses my idealized self-image, but my psyche is only slightly different. Now, Rahne has brought up an interesting point, that Illyana's background is just as abusive, albeit in a very unconventional way."

"Then it is possible? That would simplify matters immensely."

"We're getting into a more complex situation with Illyana. First, we can't be certain her transformation is genetic at all. It might be no more like natural mutation than having surgery. Second, we do have a distinct source that the transformation emulates. Even so, it's at least possible that Illyana is...acting out what's happened to her, or trying to separate it from herself." He adjusts his glasses, the ones he hangs onto for that purpose alone. It's a bit of a crutch, but so what? "Charles, I have to admit that this notion is concerning on multiple levels. If all our powers express some facet of our personalities, what does that mean? How is it accomplished? And what sorts of treatment are indicated for powers like Bruce's, powers that endanger others or ourselves? This idea goes beyond taking care of one girl."

The professor shrugs. "It does indeed. For now, though...what do you need to start?"

"Bloodwork, I suppose. And an interview with as many of your students as possible."

*****

"My great-grandfather was *the* Rasputin. Sometimes I wonder if he was really Wolverine," Illyana says impishly, hanging over a pew. "The stories sound ludicrous until you take mutants into account."

"About how they poisoned him an' shot him an' he still lived until they drowned him?"

"That's him. Logan could do that." Illyana puts her hands down and pushes off from the pew to stand on her head. "Of course, they also say he made the tsar's heir's hemophilia better, and I think that's out of Wolvie's line of work."

"Maybe it was simply a miracle," Rahne says. Illyana tries not to roll her eyes at the girl's naivete.

"Great-grandpapa was a _Khlysty_ ," Illyana points out. The blood is all rushing to her head, so she rights herself. "He believed you had to sin greatly in order to be forgiven greatly. Terribly heretical, don't you think?"

Rahne looks troubled. "Perhaps ye should follow in his footsteps."

"Ha! Why not? Can't sin much more than I do just by existing, right? I'll break out the whips."

Just when she thinks Rahne is going to be all work and no play, suddenly the girl becomes a wolf and bowls her over. "I canna see you as a flagellant, Illyana. Ye'd ruin all yuir dresses." She's human again, on the other side.

"Just have to do without," Illyana says. "Sin greatly, right?" And she winks at Rahne.

Rahne makes a hilarious meeping sound and vanishes among the pews. "Rahne? Come out, come out, wherever you are! You don't wear any clothes half the time yourself."

"Only when I'm a wolf," comes the response, lost somewhere in the chapel. "They don't make wolf clothes."

"Hmm, yes, that's a problem, isn't it?" She's here somewhere. Illyana could get to like this game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the real world, we now know that Grigori Rasputin died in a rather prosaic manner, and may not have actually joined the Khlysty. But this is the Marvel Universe, folks. He's nothing spectacular there.
> 
> As to whether Rahne is onto something about Illyana...who knows?


	5. Chapter 5

*lust--shame lust--shame*

Dani has long since accepted that Rahne's mind is hard to read. Geared not toward general telepathy, but toward trawling limbic systems for strong emotions, her power fails to pick up conscious human thought but reads animal minds as a sort of byproduct. It isn't designed for the ambiguous situation Rahne's shapeshifting power presents, where a human girl forces human thought through an animal brain. Still, this combo has become familiar to her, especially in the sweaty, adrenaline-charged Danger-Room environment. She can only hope that one day, the Fuzzball will be able to feel honest desire for *someone* and express it.

*Lust--Abject Terror--Shame*

Okay, where the heck did that come from?

Rahne is in her half-wolf form. Where is she? Dani tracks flashes of imagery, bits and pieces of the maze, scents she isn't equipped to process, snatches of speech. She's got to be around somewhere. She's--whoops.

Dani turns around. Up and to the left in the multilevel maze...there! Rahne is hurrying away, alone Dani thinks. Rahne was watching Dani.

Rahne was lusting for *her*? Crap, no wonder she's freaking out. Dani shimmies up the ladder as fast as she can and pursues.

Danielle Moonstar likes to show off her body. She's hot and she knows it. Mostly she makes out with guys, but from time to time she's had a girl-crush. Rahne, though...Rahne is not like that. She had to be persuaded that it was okay to be naked in animal form, mostly on the grounds that no human would be attracted to *that*. Dani hopes Rahne never finds out about some of the stranger subcultures she's encountered, or she'll insist on finding clothes for her half-wolf form too.

"Rahne?" Dani focuses on the tenuous contact, but she can't close her eyes; she'll run into traps. Wait. Over there, behind the false panel in the wall. She raps twice and pops the lock.

Rahne is padding along quickly, but then she realizes Dani has caught up. She whines a little and hunkers down. "I'm sorry," she mumbles. "I should've known you'd notice."

"Is this the first time?" Dani asks. People realize these things at all sorts of ages. "That you've noticed, I mean?"

"I dinna know. Sometimes it's...lots of people around and...I can say it could be Sam or 'Berto...but Illyana might be right next to me. Do ye ken?" Strange. Her half-wolf form seems to be shifting visibly. It changes from month to month, but Dani's never seen it happen. "And then last night...I was dreaming of Sam, only it wasn't Sam. Shan was possessing him, and...I dinna stop when I found out."

"You know she'd never do that, right?" If anything, Shan is more inhibited about her power than Rahne ever was; it's hard to use ethically.

"I know it."

Dani is about to call a break in the test when Kitty comes phasing through the wall. "Hey, I saw something was up. Everything all right in here?"

*Lust--Terror--Shame* Rahne's thoughts are getting clearer, and at the same time less plain. She's definitely shifting further toward her wolf side, and Dani can't be sure if she's doing it on purpose...or what "on purpose" even means if her subconscious mind is getting away with her. "Kitty, maybe we should end the exercise. Or at least Rahne needs to take a break."

Rahne whimpers. She barely looks human at all right now--she has hands of a sort and not much more. Dani can't feel much from her besides a little fear and a lot of desire; the shame has all but vanished. She also can't feel the static of Rahne's human thoughts, though. "Can't...stuck...I can't...."

Dani touches Kitty's shoulder and touches her head surreptitiously, though in the state of mind Rahne's in, she's not sure Rahne is capable of understanding. Kitty takes a deep breath, then nods. She crouches down and beckons to Rahne.

Rahne bolts.

*****

Max Eisenhardt, alias Eric Lensherr, alias Michael Xavier, makes a face and shoves the letter away. What did Charles think a human psychiatrist could do for his students that Charles himself could not? The letter goes on and on about a lack of clear genetic markers for any specific power. Magneto has known that for decades. He suspects that the details are lost somewhere in tertiary or even quaternary structure, but surely the answer is not Doctor Samson's blather about an "omni-power determined by consciousness".

And, of course, he wants to "help" Illyana. Magneto knows where such "help" always ends. His students do not need a cure.

Danielle Moonstar barges into his office. "Sir, it's Rahne. She's having problems and is hiding out on the campus...somewhere...in wolf form. We tried shutting the Danger Room down, but she took off."

"You can't track her?" Magneto frowns and stands.

"I've tried. I'm not sure of anything I'm reading from her right now. She's...having problems with her powers."

Danielle is hiding something, he's sure of that, but what? Charles can be a privileged fool at times--such as with Dr. Samson; he tosses the letter into the trash--but he could have resolved this at once. If he would have, at least. He''s changed a great deal since the days when he routinely wiped the menories of students' families, and not for the better. "Very well. Let's organize a search."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I genuinely am unsure when Magneto took over the school. The story''s about to go au anyway, I think.


End file.
